UVM and college sports from the Burlington Free Press sports department

Ice chips: Eagles angry; UVM women home; D3 in stretch drive

Boston College has lost four of its last five games and the opening round of the Beanpot Tournament looms on Monday.

Is this the wrong time or the right time for the University of Vermont to travel to Chestnut Hill to play the fifth-ranked Eagles on Friday night?

Hard to say, of course.

On the one hand, the Eagles could be in a funk and looking ahead to the Beanpot. On the other hand, BC might be primed to take out all their frustrations on a team that seldom has done well at Conte Forum.

Either way, UVM’s only hope of victory is to play a cohesive and intense team game.

A team with the blue-chip, NHL-blessed talent of BC can have a handful of players just go through the motions and the skill of their teammates can still carry them to victory.

Not so Vermont or any of the other teams outside of the league’s elite. As UVM coach Kevin Sneddon put it, if two or three Catamounts are competing at less than 100 percent, Vermont’s chances of success dips measurably.

That was evident in recent weeks when UVM went 1-4 during a five-game Hockey East home stand. Only in the finale with the Catamounts come close to that elusive 100 percent and it resulted in a 3-2 win over Massachusetts.

After the game, captain H.T. Lenz had a message for his teammates.

“His message to the guys was, ‘Come Monday, we are going to work as hard if not harder than we did all last week’,” Sneddon said.

Sitting eighth one point ahead of Northeastern and two up on Maine, Vermont has a tenuous grip on the final playoff spot with a brutal schedule ahead.

“Every weekend is playoffs. We can’t look at the standings. We’ve just got to keep play as hard as we did on Saturday night and continue to get better,” Sneddon said. “We have to be clicking on all cylinders from the standpoint of our compete level.

“Kyle Reynolds talked about it postgame. We’ve been on him and his teammates have been on him a little bit. He’s one of the most talented players we’ve had here in my time but he kind of goes in and out of the competitive battle stuff,” Sneddon said. “Not that we want him to be a huge hitter; it’s not his game, but when he focuses on the details of the game, he’s exceptional and that’s what we saw Saturday night.

“We need him to continue to provide that consistency in doing that. It’s not always going to result in two goals but he was effective in so many ways Saturday night, even defensively,” Sneddon said. “We need other guys to understand that if we’re going to be successful at all, we can’t have two or three guys not be ultra-competitive.”

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UVM women at home: Last time out, the UVM women built a 3-0 lead, then lost 6-3 to Northeastern.

Now the Catamounts (6-15-3; 4-6-3 HEA) play six of their final eight games at home, including New Hampshire on Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m.

Currently UVM is solidly in sixth place, seven points ahead of No. 7 Maine. Vermont trails New Hampshire by only two points, so this weekend’s series is very important in the race for postseason seeding. The Catamounts also trail No. 4 Providence by only three points.

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Division 3 stretch drive: Speaking of standings, the Division 3 regular season is hurtling into its final days with three weekends left.

In the ECAC East, Norwich (16-2-0; 11-1-0) and Castleton (13-5-2; 8-4-1) are 1-2 with the Cadets holding a five-point lead over the Spartans. The two will collide in Kreitzberg Arena in a week. Still, Norwich — No. 1 nationally — is in command.

St. Michael’s (6-12-0; 3-9-0) is tied for eighth in the East but the Division II Purple Knights are ineligible for the East tournament.

On the NESCAC scene, Middlebury (8-8-2; 7-3-2) is sitting fourth but with only a one-point edge over Amherst in the race for the final quarterfinal home ice berth.

The Norwich women (14-2-3; 13-1-0) are as dominant in their league as the Cadet men are in theirs. NU has a seven-point lead over Manhattanville and St. Anselm. Castleton (8-8-3; 5-4-3) is sitting sixth in the standings while St. Michael’s (1-16-1; 1-13-0) is 12th but, like the SMC men, is ineligible for the East tourney.

The Middlebury women (12-3-2; 9-1-2) sit atop the NESCAC standings with a three-point advantage over Bowdoin.

In the USCHO.com national polls, the Norwich men are No. 1 with Plattsburgh at No. 9 and Castleton among the “others receiving votes.”

The women’s D-3 poll features Plattsburgh as No. 1 with Norwich and Middlebury holding down the Nos. 4 and 5 spots.